Just a place for me to put some things.

Words.

They describe everything. For so long now, I’ve been a person who loves words. I’m an avid reader, an okay writer and I love to flourish my sentences with expressive words to describe things in a big way.

Words can build a person up, like pretty much nothing else really can. When my husband looks at me and tells me I’m beautiful, or when he expresses his love to me, it makes me feel on top of the world. When my minions tell me things like I’m the best mom in the world, I know it’s the truth in their world, even when I feel like I fail so much. When you complement your kids, there is no words that really can express the look they get on their faces, especially in their eyes. You can see the pride there.

Words can also tear people down. So, so much. We thrive on the way the world around us sees us, regardless of whether we want to or not. It builds our self-esteem, more than it should really, but nevertheless, that’s what it does. When I admonish my kids, you can see the feelings they are having right on their face about whatever it is they are being corrected about. When I say something negative or nasty to my husband, in the heat of the moment, I can tell immediately that it’s struck a chord with him. These things are typically the things he thinks about himself and how he is doing as a husband/parent, instead of all the praise that I and others as well give him about the role he’s stepped into in our family. It breaks my heart to know that because of my big ol’ mouth, he’s more negative towards himself than positive. Trust me, there is way more to be positive about, but that’s what he hears. I can’t take them back once they are said, and I feel like a complete fool for ever hurting him like that, same with my kiddos.

What does it do for us, to tear others down? How does it really, in any way at all, help us to speak negatively towards someone? A loved one. A mate. A perfect stranger. I’ve noticed a trend recently. There has been a whole lot of stuff happening in our country that seems to want to divide all of us. Racism….marriage equality….presidential candidates….the list could go on and on. The way the media presents things to us only fuels the fire. People see an ad on something, get click-baited into reading an article and get themselves all fired up over something that didn’t even require their opinion being weighed in on to begin with. Then, publicly, they decide that everyone must know their opinion and if you disagree, you are a bigot….racist….homophobe…privileged….thug….un-American….traitor to your kind….

STOP!

PLEASE?!

We are the ones who are tearing apart our own country from within. We are tearing people down with words of hatred. We are only hurting others and ourselves more and more every day.

Guess what happens when we all come together, and decide that our differences aren’t a terrible thing? We can start building one another up, and by cause and effect, make a difference in the world we live in. We can believe that our differences are to be celebrated, instead of treated everyone and everything different from us has some form of leprosy and we are all going to catch this plague and become as crazy as them.

Trust me, you can’t catch through a sneeze somebody else’s opinions. But, what you can catch is some respect for differences, and love for the common dignity and humanity of someone.

We just celebrated the 4th of July, and that happens to be one of my very favorite holidays. The Declaration of Independence begins with these words, and I’m just going to leave them here for you to read and reflect on.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

There is so much more I could write about this, but it mostly will fall on deaf ears. I’m going to keep trying to pursue happiness though, for me, for my husband, my children, and all of those around me. And maybe start handing out Snicker’s to people, cause they always seem so angry anymore. 😀